A day like a dream

DENVER — Who can say for certain where the tears came from? There were the days picking cotton as a girl, her legs scratched and bleeding from the plants' sharp spurs. There were the restaurants that wouldn't take her order, the credit union that wouldn't accept her application and, later, the swimming hole where her kids weren't allowed to swim with the white children.

The barriers of segregation came down so gradually that Bertha Means never experienced an epiphany -- one defining moment to celebrate freedom's progress. But the African American great-grandmother and civil rights pioneer finally had that moment Thursday night a long way from her Texas home.

The 88-year-old delegate to the Democratic National Convention said she felt in her bones what Michelle Obama called "the current of history [meeting] this new tide of hope." She found herself crying, uncharacteristically, first when she listened to the candidate's wife's speech Monday night. When Hillary Rodham Clinton moved to make Barack Obama the unanimous choice of the convention during the delegate roll call, tears again streamed down her face.

As Means watched a 47-year-old black man hurdle over one of the highest barriers in American life -- nomination as a major party's presidential candidate -- she applauded and laughed and waved an American flag. "Isn't it fantastic? Isn't it fantastic?" she called out as fireworks exploded overhead.

A night earlier, the retired school administrator explained her week of high emotion.

"I was remembering the people who died to get where we are right now," she said. "People who gave their lives to be able to vote, to be able to own a home, to be able to live where they wanted to live. . . . All of that just came back, and it brought tears to my eyes. It's a new day. It's a new day. And I'm just so pleased."

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Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois still must win over millions of Americans to take the White House. Even fervent supporters acknowledge that he has a long way to go to persuade many voters, particularly those who worry about his relative youth and inexperience.

But Means and other African Americans who lived through much bleaker times chose on this night to think about the distance already traveled, the slights overcome, and to celebrate an achievement some weren't sure they would ever see. A tribute earlier in the evening ensured no one would forget that Obama's 44-minute acceptance speech came 45 years to the day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told the nation: "I have a dream."